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Ronnie and Ron

Eugene Jarecki’s “Reagan,” which aired on HBO last night (and will air a whole bunch of other times as well) makes a nice change from the dense fog of hagiography that has been moistening the centennial of the birth of the only Republican President since Coolidge who, by today’s standards, arguably qualifies as a non-RINO.

It’s a good, smart film, very much worth watching even if (like me) you are something of a Reaganologist. (I covered Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California for Newsweek in 1966, lost my fun White House job when he unseated Carter, nipped at his heels from The New Republic throughout the eighties, and have read at least a million words about him, including a hundred thousand or so of my own.) If you’re under forty and/or weren’t paying obsessive attention at the time, the film will be full of revelations for you. Jarecki, while properly critical, is properly respectful, too. (If anything, “Reagan” is a bit too nice to its subject.) Anyway, kudos to Jarecki, and also to HBO, which has become an important patron of first-rate documentary filmmaking.

Jarecki’s main interviewee is Ron Reagan, the only son of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and what’s most interesting to me about the picture is how impressive he is: thoughtful, wryly humorous, clear-eyed, intelligent, articulate. Ron Reagan has just published a memoir, “My Father at 100” (Viking), which I’ve been dipping into, and my impression so far is that the book has many of the same qualities as the author. (There’s a nice review here.)

You are probably glancingly familiar with Ron Reagan from his occasional appearances on MSNBC. He’s now a fit and youthful fifty-two, with no particular career. I wish he’d run for office. I don’t know where he lives, but I suspect it must be someplace where being a liberal Democrat (which he is) isn’t a big liability. Ron has a lot of his late father’s easygoing, nonhostile likeability, without the vagueness and the offputting (to me, though I know many found it charming) heh-heh inanity. Ron has often been quoted as saying he could never be elected to anything because he’s an atheist. To which I say: come to Manhattan. Or parts of Brooklyn.

Frank Mankiewicz once told me (I hope I’m remembering this right) that back around 1948 or 1950, he (Frank) and his fellow members of the Beverly Hills Democratic Committee considered drafting Ronald Reagan as their local congressional candidate. They decided against the idea because they thought Reagan was too liberal to win. How different history might have turned out if they had not made that monumental blunder. Reagan probably would still have become President, but he’d have been “our” President, if you get my drift. We’d probably have gotten single-payer!

All I’m saying is, one should not make any rash assumptions when it comes to considering whether a person named Reagan should run for public office.

Hendrik Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer at The New Yorker. He regularly blogs about politics.